Waterstones Oxford Street

Auto-Tuned Opening Lines - Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James

Lyrics:

I scowl with frustration at myself in the mirror.

Damn my hair—it just won’t behave,

and damn Katherine Kavanagh for being ill

and subjecting me to this ordeal.

I should be studying for my final exams,

which are next week, yet here I am

trying to brush my hair into submission. 

I must not sleep with it wet.

I must not sleep with it wet. 

Reciting this mantra several times,

I attempt, once more,

to bring it under control with the brush.

I roll my eyes in exasperation

and gaze at the pale, brown-haired girl

with blue eyes too big for her face staring back at me

—

You too can Auto-Tune your life using the ace Songify app (here) created by The Gregory Brothers (here).

Auto-Tuned Opening Lines - Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut

Lyrics:

All this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true.

One guy I knew really was shot in Dresden for taking a teapot that wasn’t his.

Another guy I knew really did threaten to have his personal enemies killed by hired gunmen after the war.

And so on. I’ve changed all the names. 

I really did go back to Dresden with Guggenheim money (God love it) in 1967.

It looked a lot like Dayton, Ohio, more open spaces than Dayton has.

There must be tons of human bone meal in the ground. 

I went back there with an old war buddy, Bernard V. O’Hare,

and we made friends with a cab driver, who took us to the slaughterhouse where

we had been locked up at night as prisoners of war.

—

You too can Auto-Tune your life using the ace Songify app (here) created by The Gregory Brothers (here).

Auto-Tuned Opening Lines - Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman.

This one gets a little hard to hear, you might want the lyrics.

Lyrics

The night before he went to London,

Richard Mayhew was not enjoying himself.

He had begun the evening by enjoying himself:

he had enjoyed reading the good-bye cards,

and receiving the hugs from several not entirely unattractive young ladies of his acquaintance;

he had enjoyed the warnings about the evils and dangers of London,

and the gift of the white umbrella with the map of the London Underground on it that his friends had chipped in money to buy;

he had enjoyed the first few pints of ale;

but then, with each successive pint he found

that he was enjoying himself significantly less;

until now he was sitting and shivering on the sidewalk outside the pub

in a small Scottish town, weighing the relative merits of being sick and not being sick

—

Auto-Tuned Opening Lines - The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham

Lyrics:

When a day that you happen to know is Wednesday

starts off by sounding like Sunday,

there is something seriously wrong somewhere.

I felt that from the moment I woke.

And yet, when I started functioning a little more sharply, I misgave.

After all, the odds were that it was I who was wrong,

and not everyone else – though I did not see how that could be.

I went on waiting, tinged with doubt.

But presently I had my first bit of objective evidence –

a distant clock struck what sounded to me just like eight.

I listened hard and suspiciously.

Soon another clock began, on a loud, decisive note.

In a leisurely fashion it gave an indisputable eight.

Then I knew things were awry.

The way I came to miss the end of the world –

well, the end of the world I had known

for close on thirty years –was sheer accident:

like a lot of survival, when you come to think of it.

—

You too can Auto-Tune your life (or books you like) using the ace Songify app (here) created by The Gregory Brothers (here).

Auto-Tuned Opening Lines - The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

Lyrics:

We slept in what had once been the gymnasium.

The floor was of varnished wood, with stripes and circles painted on it,

for the games that were formerly played there;

the hoops for the basketball nets were still in place,

though the nets were gone.

A balcony ran around the room, for the spectators,

and I thought I could smell, faintly like an afterimage,

the pungent scent of sweat,

shot through with the sweet taint of chewing gum

and perfume from the watching girls,

felt-skirted as I knew from pictures,

later in miniskirts, then pants,

then in one earring, spiky green-streaked hair.

Dances would have been held there;

the music lingered, a palimpsest of unheard sound,

style upon style,

an undercurrent of drums

—

You too can Auto-Tune your life using the ace Songify app (here) created by The Gregory Brothers (here).

Auto-Tuned Opening Lines - Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel

We’re celebrating the release of Hilary Mantel’s Bring Up The Bodies with this worryingly catchy tune.

Lyrics:

“His children are falling from the sky.

He watches from horseback,

acres of England stretching behind him;

they drop, gilt-winged, each with a blood-filled gaze.

Grace Cromwell hovers in thin air.

She is silent when she takes her prey,

silent as she glides to his fist.

But the sounds she makes then,

the rustle of feathers and the creak,

the sigh and riffle of pinion,

the small cluck-cluck from her throat,

these are sounds of recognition,

intimate, daughterly, almost disapproving.

Her breast is gore-streaked and flesh clings to her claws.

Later Henry will say,

‘Your girls flew well today.’

The hawk Anne Cromwell bounces on the glove of Rafe Sadler,

who rides by the king in easy conversation.

They are tired; the sun is declining,

and they ride back to Wolf Hall with the reins slack on the necks of their mounts.

Tomorrow his wife and two sisters will go out.

These dead women,

their bones long sunk in London clay,

are now transmigrated.

Weightless, they glide on the upper currents of the air.

They pity no one.

They answer to no one.

Their lives are simple.

—

You too can Auto-Tune your life using the ace Songify app (here) created by The Gregory Brothers (here).